I’ve been meaning to write for a while. I don’t think I’m particularly a great writer (I just know I’m not… I don’t get all inspired by reading my writing as I do when reading some of my peers, for example). But I think I’m a decent writer with a conversant style that resonates with some people… one that apparently gets more than 200 people to write to me over the last 5 years, with an average of 40 new people viewing the same static content every day. For one, I’ve been really humbled by my former COO, who is now the President of a large Publishing Company, who told me that he spent 3 hours one Saturday reading my webpage. And he had a wife and a daughter to spend the weekend with! So I think there’s something there about my writing style (combined with the content of the situations I happen to get involved in) that at least gets people reading and continuing to read. I never thought people would care about what I wrote… I thought at most that the interest would die down after a while. But again, no one’s knocking down the doors to get me to write a book to publish, either.
All that to say that regardless of wherever in that continuum the reader may fall, I have always loved writing. It’s always been my way of communicating (mostly to myself) and to organize my thoughts. I think I’ve always loved writing because I feel that I’ve always known how to express myself with words. I re-read the words I wrote in the past and immediately feel the same feelings and emotions that I had when I wrote it. I’ve never really had trouble expressing my feelings and emotions either in writing or in any relationships, both cordial/friendly and romantic. I’ve always enjoyed having and exercising that kind of freedom.
Of course, again, that doesn’t mean that I think I’m a great writer. It simply means that I can write (and say) things that mean something to me, and I’m not stumbling for words. I know what I’m saying, and I feel pretty confident about my ability to communicate (again, to myself), how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking. I sometimes talk to people who don’t know what they’re thinking, or how to communicate what they’re feeling, and realize that even though my writing style may not be that great, at least I’ve always felt that I had that freedom to communicate about myself to… me.
So 2012 was tough for me because I shut down my xanga in April of 2012 in anticipation of this new website being launched. To summarize, the platform is now brand new (which allows guests to comment and navigate much more easily, and allows me to make changes, add content, and respond to guests much more easily as well), and the content is now a combination of my original drivetosouthamerica.com webpage, my xanga, my blogger, and my personal journal accounts. It’s great to finally feel like I have a single consolidated place to write.
But working through all of those changes meant that I spent a much more inordinate amount of time working on the webpage and not actually writing about my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Also, I had taken down my xanga as my blog site because having duplicate content was simply bad for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Not really knowing exactly when I was going to be able to launch this, I wanted to give the web search engines plenty of time to see that my xanga and blogger accounts were no longer active. Which meant I didn’t do any writing, really.
One of the benefits of not writing was that it helped clarify to me what I would like to blog about versus what I would simply like to point out. At certain points in the last 12 years of my journaling/blogging that everyone in the world now has access to, I simply felt like I was journaling/blogging for the sake of it. I wasn’t really writing my thoughts and feelings. I was writing about the news, posting interesting pictures or videos, or simply a play-by-play account of the day. That simply left much to be desired when I read all of them again. What I really valued was the expression of my thoughts and emotions, not just physical happenings devoid of those elements. I think that time off writing really provided some needed gap to re-focus for what I will write about going forward.
But I always had the itch to write in 2012, even though I didn’t. Whenever something big and personal happened, I wanted to write. For example, I got laid off as a Director of Finance at House Party last year. Why? How did that make me feel? How did I respond? I think I responded very favorably, and thankfully I was keeping a journal through my Personal Spiritual Disciplines that chronicles my thoughts during that particular part of my life. But how about my father’s visit to NYC, which was the first of our meetings in the last 3 years? How about the Carnegie Hall event? How about the new job? How about me starting out as a small group leader? How about moving to Queens, NY, from White Plains, NY? How am I adjusting to turning 29 in December 2012? Am I still thinking about a Ph.D program? Should I stay in NYC? Should I sell all that I have and become a Christian missionary? What are now my hopes and dreams?
Those are some of the biggest topics in the past 12 months that I wanted to write about at one point or another but never did, neither in public nor in private. My dad’s visit impacted me the most, probably, last year, followed by my layoff, and then my move to Queens.
But I would say that the one that I’ve always wanted to write about was oddly the one that didn’t really impact me a whole lot. Instead, the one I’ve always wanted to write about was the one that just made me think a whole lot. And the one that made me think the most was the Carnegie Hall event.
To briefly summarize, I will say that this was the first year in the last 4 years that I was simply backstage in the annual Carnegie Hall event. I asked, through mutual friend #1, for the numbers of girl #1. I had never met her before, but there was a couple momentary interactions that just told me that she doesn’t taken herself very seriously, and that we would have a lot of fun together if I ever got together with her even on a friendly basis. The mutual friend 1 then told me that yes, what I thought about her was correct, but alas! She had just recently got in a relationship.
That one sucked. A lot. I lost my appetite for 2-3 days. I was really looking forward to it. I had thought, there’s no way she would reject at least an opportunity to simply hang out, because we had just hit it off really quickly. I’m of the mindset that you can figure out whether you like someone or not in the first 5-15 minutes. I knew I was going to like her, and I knew she was at least not going to be bored by me. My experience tells me I’m about 90% right in these perceptions.
What got me thinking during those 2-3 days, though was what my mutual friend #1 had said when I asked her if she can get me a phone number. At this beginning stage of the conversation, I had not told her who it was. She took a guess on her own and said, “oh, is it girl #2 who plays the viola from that church #2?” I had no idea who girl #2 was. I had to go through my memory bank to isolate the rest of the viola players and churches, and I knew later on who she was talking about. But the fact that I had to figure it out meant I had not paid much attention to her at the event.
What piqued my interest was also the fact that the Director of the choir, the same one who was directing the Carnegie Hall event, had me come by on Father’s Day last year to share a meal together. I was the only non-family member there, so one one hand I really appreciated that he reached out to me, someone so much his junior, and yet I felt out-of-place in a family environment in a day usually celebrated among family members. But he had said then, “you should come back to my church, there’s this girl I want to introduce you to, she plays the viola.”
So I put the 2 and 2 together and figured, this has to be the same girl. How many people play the viola from that church? How many people play the viola, period? So I figured, if two people I trust was thinking about the same person, maybe they see something that I can’t see simply because I don’t know her as well as they do; we don’t know each other as well as they do. So I took my chances and asked mutual friend #2 to get me the number of girl #2. Friend #2 first emails girl #2, and asks her if she has a boyfriend. She responds that she doesn’t. So my friend #2 asks her if it’s ok for someone (me) to contact her. No response for about 24 hours, and then my friend #2 calls and says, “I think it’s ok for you to call her.” So I go by her recommendation and email girl #2.
Long behold, even though I had emailed girl #2, she responds to my friend #2 and tells her that although she’s single, she’s not looking for a relationship right now. But she never emails me back.
Of course, I’m just thinking, well what changed? Why didn’t you say that in the first email? (Maybe she just didn’t think that my friend was asking to hook me up, she was just curious? Or maybe she was going to say yes/no based on who she found out it was?) Why didn’t she respond to my email and only to my friend’s? After all, I put my balls out there as a man to ask a girl out like a man should.
But all in all, girl #2 didn’t really bother me much. After all, I had to try and figure out who people were talking about in the first place; I hardly really even paid much attention to her at Carnegie Hall. Is she pretty? Yeah, I would say so. But I really rarely go for the pretty one when I know nothing about her, and there’s another pretty one who I know I’m going to hit it off with. And girl #1 is the one I lost my appetite over. That one sucked, and I’ll admit it as such. It sucked bad.
All that to say that all of this really got me thinking. I pretty much got over all of that after about a week or two, which in the grand scheme of things, really wasn’t much. What really got me thinking was the fact that I had lost my appetite. Why? I hardly ever lost my appetite. The last time I did was when I got robbed in Panama in 2007. I felt like throwing up everything I ate back then, and this one, although not nearly as bad and only happened with girl #1, was still happening. Why did I even care? Why didn’t I just move on?
I think my conclusion at the end of it all was that I was fixated on the wrong things. I was turning 29 in December (this happened in October of 2012). I was conforming to the culture of the world, where everyone looks at you as though something’s wrong with you, or as though you’re someone that deserves a lot of pity, if you’re 30 and single. It’s not as though she refused to marry me after years of dating! I knew not much about her other than chemistry potential based on fleeting, momentary interactions.
And so even though girl #1 herself wasn’t my idol (since I never thought to myself, it’s her or nobody), she exemplified what my idol was: conforming to this culture, desiring to be like other people, and hoping to never have to answer the question, “why are you 30 and single?” I don’t think I so much cared about being in a relationship for myself, at least more than I cared about being in a relationship for others… I wanted to have someone pretty to show off with, and someone that will get people off my back about the “why 30 and single” questions. I wanted someone with a lively personality and an established character for people to see and immediately think, “well if she’s that awesome, then Elliott must be awesome enough to get her, too.” To be honest, I don’t think I was even really looking forward to be in a relationship for the right and pure reasons; it would have been tough to juggle my schedule for it, although I did think that it would have been worth juggling for.
Do I really trust Christ? Do I really love him more than anything else? If my answer is yes, then my emotions should have immediately gone to Christ, and not on the passing worldly things that matter little to nothing. My focus should have been loving Christ first and foremost, which surpasses all my worldly desires, including the love of a person to be in a relationship with. And I should have focused on who I know to be glorifies God the most in their own individual spiritual lives, not just someone who is going to fill my desire to have a good time with.
And if that really was my answer and focus, then I don’t think I would have lost my appetite over someone that I had less than 15 minutes of fleeting moments with in the backstage of an annual event at Carnegie Hall. I think I would have worshiped God and moved on. I think my emotions at that time really showed what my desires and motives were.
Objective self-diagnosis of selfish motives are not easy to do without some input, but I’m pretty comfortable now in the conclusion that I’ve drawn; I think it’s accurate. At the very least I know it’s honest.